Real life examples show the crucial role diet plays in treating feline diabetes, and the devastating effect dry food carbohydrates can have on cats.

 

 

"Maggie" is a 10-year-old female white long-haired cat. Like almost all of my patients, she had eaten dry food since she was a kitten. Occasionally her owners would feed her some canned food as a special treat, but during the day she ate many small meals of a "premium quality" dry cat food. She had been healthy for 10 years and was not overweight at 8 pounds. One day, Maggie's owners noticed that she seemed to be losing weight. Her backbone seemed more noticeable to them, even through her long coat.

 

She wasn't eating very well and was drinking a lot of water. When I saw Maggie, she was dehydrated and weighed only 7 pounds. A blood test showed that her blood sugar level was 410 mg/dl (this is a measure of how much sugar is in each one-tenth liter of blood; a liter is about a quart). Normal resting blood sugar levels for the cat range between about 50 mg/dl and 120 mg/dl. Maggie also had sugar in her urine.

 

We hospitalized Maggie and started feeding her canned food only. Maggie was ecstatic; she was getting her special treat food twice a day and she loved it. By the second day Maggie's average blood sugar was 180 mg/dl and by the third day it was 100 mg/dl. We sent Maggie home with no insulin and told the Dunbars to feed only canned food to her. A week later, Maggie had been completely normal at home and her blood sugar level was 90 mg/dl on average. With her owners only feeding her canned food twice a day, Maggie remains normal to this day (two years later) and has never needed insulin injections. She has gained back the lost pound and is doing great.

 

 

"Goldstein" Murphy is an 8 year old neutered male domestic shorthaired tabby cat whose owner is completely devoted to him. Mr. Murphy is single and Goldstein is his roommate and best friend. Mr. Murphy adopted Goldstein from the local animal shelter as a kitten; the two had spent 8 years hanging out together and keeping each other company, and Goldstein ate commercial dry food exclusively all his life.

 

One day, Mr. Murphy noticed that Goldstein was spending a lot of time near his water bowl. This was very unusual for the cat as he usually spent his days sunning near a large window in the house. Goldstein was going to the litter box almost every hour as well. This also was not usual for him, so Mr. Murphy brought Goldstein to me for examination. Goldstein was overweight at 14 pounds (I told Mr. Murphy he should weigh about 11 pounds) but was in good condition otherwise. He was still eating his dry food well and was relatively active.

 

We took a blood and urine sample for analysis; Goldstein was very diabetic with lots of sugar in his urine and a blood sugar level of 490 mg/dl.

 

We hospitalized Goldstein and started feeding him canned food. He liked the new food and ate it well. By the next day Goldstein's blood sugar level was down to 300 mg/dl without insulin. The diet alone had helped him a lot. We added 1 unit of insulin twice daily (I always use a special kind called protamine-zinc insulin, or PZI, which works best in cats) and by the third day Goldstein's blood sugar was between 100mg/dl and 150 mg/dl throughout the day. We sent Goldstein home with Mr. Murphy on I unit PZI insulin every 12 hours and a canned-food-only diet.

 

A week later, at Goldstein's weekly blood sugar check, we discovered that his sugar level was 60 mg/dl. This meant that Goldstein was in the low normal range for blood sugar, and needed to have his insulin reduced or even stopped. We stopped his insulin for 24 hours, rechecked his blood sugar, and it was still 60 mg/dl. We sent Goldstein home and instructed Mr. Murphy not to give any more insulin until we checked Goldstein again in one week. One week later, Goldstein's blood sugar was still low normal. He has not needed any insulin injections for over a year now. He is healthy and happy and has lost almost two pounds in that year. Mr. Murphy knows never to feed his cat any dry food ever again. The following story shows why . . .

 

 

My own cat "Punkin," the one whose out-of-control diabetes had caused me to start thinking about what we veterinarians might be doing wrong with our feline diabetic patients, was doing great. His blood sugar levels had been in the low-normal range for almost two years without any insulin injections. He ate low- carbohydrate canned cat food happily and had lost a pound from his earlier 12 pound frame. My husband and I decided to board Punkin at a local cat boarding facility while we took a week-long vacation. We instructed the manager of the facility that we wanted Punkin to eat only canned food that we brought along for him and nothing else during our time away.

 

When we returned from our vacation, we took Punkin home. We immediately noticed that he was very thirsty and filled up his litter box with urine the first night he was home. I tested his blood for sugar and found his level was 400 mg/dl! Punkin was diabetic again! I was devastated. I started giving him small doses of insulin again and called the boarding facility to ask about Punkin's stay there.

 

After much discussion, the manager of the kennel told me that she had been concerned that Punkin wasn't getting enough to eat with just the canned food we asked them to feed him morning and night. She thought that cats needed to "graze" (a term that applies to cattle, not cats) during the day as well, so she gave him some premium quality dry food along with his canned food. She had meant well, and I appreciated her concern for my cat, but she had caused him to become diabetic again, and very quickly.